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Link building is a SEO practice that essentially allows websites to gain more traffic. Specifically, the goal is for the marketer to generate more traffic to their designated landing page.
The landing page is the website where the marketer wants the site visitor to engage in a course of action. Actions can include signing up on an email subscription list, selecting a product to purchase, watching a streaming video, listening to an audio file, or any other number of activities that the marketer has in mind.
As all of this pertains to link building, there’s a few methods of building out links:
Internal links: These are links that the marketer creates to lead the end user from one site page to the next. This is a great strategy for eCommerce marketers to use. The purpose of building out internal links is to keep the end user on site.
For example, if the end user is looking at a page advertising swimwear, then the marketer would be wise to link to another page within the site that advertises beach towels, as this would help to increase their sales.
External links: As the name suggests, external links are created when the marketer wants to link from their site to another. Specifically, this is a strategy that’s used when the marketer wants to create credibility by linking to a high-authority source.
Also, external links serve as a means for citing a quoted source. Authority marketers, journalists, researchers, and analysts are just a few professionals who often use external links.
Backlinks: Backlinks are those that lead from a third-party site to a marketer’s site. This happens in the instance were an authority marketer writes an educational post, and another marketer links back to the author of the piece. Backlinking helps the original marketer gain credibility in the search engines.
On-going maintenance is key
Now that you understand the basics of what you need to know about link building, let’s take a look at a bit of maintenance you’ll need to engage in after you’ve laid the groundwork for your link building strategies. Here’s two more strategies to implement.
Keep those links fresh and clean
Here’s the thing that any digital marketer who’s implementing a SEO strategy needs to keep in mind: they’ll need to constantly test their external (outbound) links. This is because the site they might be linking to might not be around in a few years. There are many different link building tools that you can use to help in this endeavor.
Even if the marketer links out to a high-authority source such as a national publication, publications often decide to archive old articles, charts, photos, etc. This means that the end-user will come to what’s known as a 404 page.
Simply put, a 404 error page lets the end-user know that the reached the wrong page, or the information they’re looking for is gone. This often ticks off the end user, and it kills the credibility of the marketer as a reliable source of information. So this is why it’s important to keep track of external links, checking them for reliability.
Spread your reach
One more link building strategy that works great is to create backlinks, and the best part is, you can create them yourself!
You do this by creating original content, then pitching your content to other site owners, and publications. Once your pitch has been accepted for publication, you’ll be allowed to create at least one link that leads the readers back to your site’s landing page.
This is a strategy that allows you to take advantage of more online reach than you’d be able to generate on your own!